With the recent rebalancing and unit changes, starships have suddenly become much more relevant. The current map provides some very interesting strategic possibilities, with rift and nebulae placement... except... 90% of the galactic topography is rendered irrelevant due to fleets being able to path outside the map. I thought the north and south parts of the galaxy were separated and couldn't be crossed by starships, and only by jumpships at certain chokepoints, but I just tried and was able to send a gunship fleet all the way around the rift to the south. Kind of defeats the purpose of tactical nebula positioning and expansion...

They don't make it TOTALLY irrelevant because they do require major detours and physically close planets may still be quite remote from one another in clearspace. You can certainly send expeditionary forces to other sectors but they will mostly be on their own, and can't be quickly reinforced until you get a working beacon (either by capturing a jumpship yard or by waiting a day for a sector capital to build up. If you are attacking the far side of a nebular band you can reinforce with infantry and jumpships by moving a gunship fleet into beacon radius and joining them to it, otherwise you get no fast reinforcements.

I think removing the extra-galactic paths would be an interesting turn of events. At the moment there is very little one can do to shore up any defenses around the galactic edges. As we all know the citidels are almost useless at the moment (I will discus this in a different place) and with since starfleets can penetrate to any degree of distance in the normal space there is no defending any world from them as one might defend from an attempted jump beacon.

I can foresee several scenarios if the extra-galactic paths are removed:

1) A more strategic use of starships and citidels. This places restrictions on the movement of the starships which they currently do not have. Much like Eldritch in Beta 2, they have free rain of all normal space. If the extra-galactic paths are removed, the edges of the nebula could be fortified and a lot of fighting will take place on attempting to establish strongholds or beachheads in order to penetrate into the normal space beyond the nebula. This allows for a more dynamic use of the pockets in the galaxy where the nebula curls and leaves little coves and out crops. Also, there might be more effective defensive options, as one would tend to favor Gorgos/Megathere for defending against an increasing number of jumpships attempting to cross the nebula. As it stands at the moment, no number of Gorgos/Megathere/Minotaur defense can withstand a combined attack by 10 Million Minotaur, 5 Million Helion, 3 Million Eldritch/Undine....
However, there would be room for stagnation if no one wanted to invade or could not figure out how to penetrate the other sector. However, players would have to better balance their starfleet/jumpfleet production because the starfleets would need to protect the edges of the nebula from invasions and the jumpfleets would be needed for QRF and also attack.

2) Starships could build up to intolerable levels and people get fed up because they can't seem to figure out how to penetrate the various sectors of the Galaxy. Then they stop playing.

3) Much more of the fighting would take place in the nebula and aggression over any choke points in the rift would increase.

4) Large empires would be much less prone to raids which brought down their entire empire. If an empire could grab hold of several sections that could not be easily penetrated all in one move, then the empire could survive and recover. We can actually see this in several situations that have occurred so far.

The first example was the mighty Hand empire of Beta 2. This empire was so impervious to destruction from the Eldritch Murder Ball because of a built up strong hold of built up starships within the nebula that it survived many attacks only to grow again and prosper.

The other is an unintended stronghold in the current galaxy that Imperium managed to take. There was a very large area within the central nebula where no jumpship beacons had been set up or could be set up within that day. Effectively making it more secure than the normal space within the nebula that Imperium's main empire occupied.

Of all the suggestions made for Era 4, I think that cutting access to the EG Routes would be the best if only one new change can be made. Let's hope that isn't the only change though.